Women's Health and Technology

In response to concerns about the confidentiality of protected health information (PHI) related to reproductive health care less than one year after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, and the prospect of such PHI being weaponized by states and used against patients, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has proposed amendments to the HIPAA Privacy Rule to protect that information.

In this second of our two-part blog series on protecting health information post Roe, we discuss legal and practical strategies that health care providers can take to protect the information of their patients. State laws that restrict or criminalize abortions will require significant amounts of health information to enforce, putting new pressure on health care providers caught in the middle of  competing obligations to their patients and to regulatory and law enforcement authorities making lawful requests for this information.

Unintended downstream consequences are likely to abound in the wake of the June 24, 2022 Dobbs decision that overruled Roe v. Wade, as Mintz attorneys have addressed in other contexts. Those looking ahead have raised concerns about women’s continued access to the wide array of birth control options that have been approved for use in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This post provides a brief historical background on how OTC birth control pills have been regulated under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and reviews the FDA's Additional Conditions for Nonprescription Use (ACNU) Proposed Rule.

Dobbs impacts employer-sponsored group health plan coverage for abortion services in states where abortion is, or becomes, illegal, and abortion-related travel benefits.  While our earlier post focused on coverage of abortion and abortion-related travel services under a group health plan, and related ERISA preemption considerations, in this post Mintz attorneys Alden Bianchi, Michelle Capezza and Patricia Moran examine other approaches available to employers that seek to make these benefits available, such as HRAs, health FSAs, excepted benefit EAPs and HSAs.

Much has been written about how existing privacy laws such as HIPAA are unhelpful to women in the wake of Dobbs vs. Jackon Women's Health Organization ruling. In the first of this two-part blog post series, the Mintz team breaks down the legal rights and practical strategies that women can use to protect their own information.